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If you want to create a good painting, you must be very careful with the details, especially if you plan to make still life oil painting. Here I will introduce to you the techniques on how to make your painting satisfying in the end.

• Take time to examine your object.
You must lay put your object in the right place with the correct lighting. If needed, you can make a setup box with a side hole to enable little light to pass through. You can also take photographs of the object so you can examine it clearly to ensure you have just the right lighting effect that you wish. With Still Life painting, do not rush this process.

• Use a pencil to begin.
A smart move to do before applying oil paint is to make a fairly detailed pencil drawing. This is where you can freely adjust the measurements of the object you want to paint. You can use rulers to measure distance and size. Just remember to remove the excess lines that are not needed in the final drawing since the graphite might contaminate the oil paint.

• Diluted Oil Paint
To create a still life painting of objects, you must first fill in the backgrounds instead of making the object first using a diluted oil paint. This is because if you do otherwise, the object might seem to float. You can use a soft-haired brush to create a film background layer. You can also use the same oil paint for the objects.

• Undiluted Paint
After the layer using diluted oil paint, you may now use undiluted oil paint using colors that are quite similar to the diluted oil paint you have used. This is used to remove unwanted brush strokes to create a smoother effect. You can add more details to this part then. You can use a palette knife and coarse brushes if you want to create a thick paint, where necessary. You must remember not to continue with this new layer without drying the previous layer.

• Add the final layer.
You need to build up liquidity and transparency to the painting so you must add a lot of mediums into it. It will result to subtle gradients. You can use ½-alkyd medium in combination of ½ linseed oil.

• Final Retouch
You can add retouching glossy varnish to finish your work of art. However, remember to wait after a week of drying your painting before applying this layer. Once you apply the glossy varnish, the next one need to be applied after 6 months or so. This enables the surface quality to regain its original look.

These techniques will surely make your work of art amazing in the end. You just have to follow it carefully. When you get practice with the different techniques, you can expect to have great results. When you have it, you will grow more as an artist.

In this article I thought I would give you some insight into the creative process I go through to put paint on canvas. Since I paint from life, choosing a subject for a painting is not difficult – there are so many things to paint. Sometimes I choose a still life, where I set up the actual objects to paint. Sometimes I want to capture light on the beach and I take a camera and study the scene for the best angles to catch the light and people to be included in the painting.

The key is to find something visually exciting and I look for bright light and dark shadow, of which there is usually an abundance where I live in Clearwater, Florida.

Once I have chosen the subject, and gotten an idea in my mind of how to arrange the images on a canvas, I start a painting by blocking out large sections, with charcoal or actual paint. I always work on the whole painting – not painting one section at a time to perfection, but working over the entire canvas all at the same time.

While I am painting I keep in mind the masterworks of painters whose paintings I have seen and studied. I strive to come up to their standards.

I paint the darker shapes and areas of the painting first. The lightest tones come last.

I’m always trying to find what might be called the “homerun” light in a painting, that part of the painting where you can really smush the light on, using lots of impasto and texture. Most people think of light as something so ethereal and lighter than air, it may seem strange that a painter has to actually paint light. But we do.

And then an artist must know when to stop. I step back and look at the painting often, and when I have achieved what I set out to achieve and the painting does not look overworked, I am done.